Southern Unionist
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In the United States, Southern Unionists were people living in the Southern United States opposed to secession and against the Civil War. The term was used during the war but during Reconstruction was replaced by Scalawag, which covered all Southern whites who supported the Republican party.
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[edit] Who was a Southern Unionist?
The term Southern Unionist incorporates a spectrum of beliefs and actions. Some Unionists opposed secession, but afterwards served and fought with the Confederate armies. Others refused to fight, went North or stayed North to enlist in the Union Armies, or fought informally as partisans or terrorist bands in the South. The term could also be used of any Southerner who worked with the Republican Party or Union government in any capacity after the war ended in 1865.
The scholar James A. Baggett profiled 742 Southern Unionists, comparing them to 666 Redeemers who opposed and eventually replaced them. He compares three regions, the Upper South, the Southeast, and the Southwest. Baggett follows the life of each Southern Unionist before, during, and after the war, with respect to birthplace, occupation, value of estate, slave ownership, education, party activity, stand on secession, war politics, and postwar politics. [1]
Baggett thus looked at 1400 political activists across the South, and gave each a score:
| Score | Activity |
|---|---|
| 1 | Antisecessionist Breckinridge supporter in 1860 election |
| 2 | Bell or Douglas supporter in 1860 election |
| 3 | 1860-61 opponent of secession |
| 4 | passive wartime unionist |
| 5 | peace party advocate |
| 6 | active wartime unionist |
| 7 | postwar Union party supporter |
Baggett found the higher the score the more likely the person was a Southern Unionist. Of course, depending on the definition, all of these activities make one a Southern Unionist by definition.
During the war, many Southern Unionists went North and joined the Union Armies. Others joined when Union armies entered their hometowns in Tennessee, Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana and elsewhere. Nearly 120,000 Southern Unionists served in the Union Army during the Civil War, and every Southern state, except South Carolina, raised Unionist regiments. Southern Unionists were extensively used as anti-guerrilla forces and as occupation troops in areas of the Confederacy occupied by the Union. Ulysses S. Grant noted "We had many regiments of brave and loyal men who volunteered under great difficulty from the twelve million belonging to the South." (Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, 1885, vol 2. chapt. 68, p. 636).[1]
Those who had not supported the Confederacy were eligible to take the "ironclad oath," as required by the Reconstruction laws in 1867 to vote or hold office.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ Baggett
[edit] References
- Thomas B. Alexander, “Persistent Whiggery in the Confederate South, l860—77," Journal of Southern History 27 (1961) 305-29, in JSTOR
- Baggett, James Alex. The Scalawags: Southern Dissenters in the Civil War and Reconstruction Louisiana State University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8071-2798-1
- DeSantis, Vincent P. Republicans Face the Southern Question: The New Departure Years, 1877—1897 (1998)
- Donald, David. "'The Scalawag in Mississippi Reconstruction.” Journal of Southern History 10 (1944) 447—60 in JSTOR
- Ellem, Warren A. “Who Were the Mississippi Scalawags?” Journal of Southern History 38 (May 1972): 2 17—40 in JSTOR
- Franklin, John Hope. Reconstruction after the Civil War (University of Chicago Press: 1961) ISBN 0-226-26079-8
- Garner; James Wilford. Reconstruction in Mississippi 1901. Dunning school monograph
- Kolchin, Peter. “Scalawags, Carpetbaggers, and Reconstruction: A Quantitative Look at Southern Congressional Politics, 1868 to 1872” Journal of Southern History 45 (1979) 63—76, in JSTOR
- McKinney, Gordon B. Southern Mountain Republicans, 1865—1900: Politics and the Appalachian Community (1998)
- Pereyra, Lillian A., James Lusk Alcorn: Persistent Whig. LSU Press, 1966.
- Perman, Michael. The Road to Redemption: Southern Politics 1869—1879 (1984)
- Rubin, Hyman. South Carolina Scalawags (2006)
- Ted Tunnell, "Creating 'the Propaganda of History': Southern Editors and the Origins of Carpetbagger and Scalawag," Journal of Southern History (Nov 2006) 72#4
- Wiggins; Sarah Woolfolk. The Scalawag in Alabama Politics, 1865—1881 (1991) online at Questia
[edit] Sources
- Fleming, Walter L. Documentary History of Reconstruction: Political, Military, Social, Religious, Educational, and Industrial 2 vol (1906). Uses broad collection of primary sources; vol 1 on national politics; vol 2 on states
- Memoirs of W. W. Holden (1911), North Carolina Scalawag governor
